Since the outbreak of COVID-19 and its rapid spreading around the world, companies have been under pressure to reconsider ways of working and to adapt the existing relationship between employers and employees. An almost-instantaneous change had to happen and new ways of working that were far beyond implementation in our day-to-day lives are now dominant.
In a pre-coronavirus world, we were already living in a fast-paced environment but now the luxury of time seems to have vanished entirely. Businesses that once mapped digital strategy in one to three-year phases must now scale their initiatives in a matter of weeks. And the ones that are able to cope this challenge and to use technology well to keep going and rethink their business model for the future by fast-tracking digital transformation will be ones ahead of their competition.
The pandemic is compelling business to turn toward digital technologies to respond to the crisis, raising a number of unique challenges for IT teams that must develop a holistic view of the organization and align IT objectives with the business objective.
According to BDO Digital, a US digital consultancy firm specialised in providing comprehensive technology solutions for companies, IT teams face three main challenges in the post pandemic context:
1. Communication tools
Even though businesses are opening doors, there are still people who work remotely and some of them on a different country’s, there are simply more layers to manage and more points of failure to cover. Because of that, ensuring a stable connection between the end-users and the network, data, and/or apps, is becoming significantly more challenging. If IT does not provide the right solutions, the users themselves will turn to other options avoiding IT recommendations and putting security at risk.
2. Provide support to workers
With some of the workforce still working remotely, many organizations had to rapidly deploy new tools to help collaborate and communicate within the organization and also with their customers and partners. With the unfamiliarity and lack of experience with these new tools and capabilities, end-users are being left frustrated and inevitability request frequent help to the IT department, which makes the department have to work twice as hard as before. It’s important that IT support structures are based on clear rules, reinforced by multichannel means of communication. IT should immediately equip users with tools allowing them to successfully solve problems on their own, and, if needed, to interact with support.
3. Ensure Security
As organizations have shifted to remote working to protect their workers while continuing to serve their customers, they have moved the majority of their activity to the digital world—increasing the risk of cyberattacks. The challenge, how to secure new remote working practices while ensuring critical business functions are operating without interruption, and how to keep the organization protected from attackers exploiting the uncertainty of the situation.
